The forms of water

by Andrea Barrett

At the age of eighty, Brendan Auberon - once a member of the Order of Our Lady of the Valley - is now a member of the Order of the Old and Crippled and Confined. Before his time runs out, Brendan has one wish: to see his two hundred acres of wooded ridge overlooking what used to be Paradise Valley...before the politicians from Boston, half a century ago, did the unthinkable. They evicted the people from their homes, their towns, their lives and drowned the villages to provide water to the big city. Now, Brendan's memories of his parents and his beloved Abbey can only be found beneath the surface of the Stillwater Reservoir. The Forms of Water is the story of what happens when Brendan - after revealing that he's leaving half the land to his niece Wiloma and half to his nephew Henry - convinces Henry to hijack the nursing home van to make this ancestral visit. What begins as a lark becomes an adventure infinitely more complex for, as the author makes clear with brilliant metaphoric flair